Cindy Hyde-Smith Defends 'Public Hanging' Joke After 'Racist Rhetoric' Accusations

Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Mississippi), running for election against an African-American man, responded to criticism over her comment on a video posted online praising someone by saying: “If he invited me to a public hanging, I’d be on the front row.” Hyde-Smith said late Sunday in a statement she was complimenting a supporter in the comment.

A video clip surfaced on social media Sunday in a post by Lamar White Jr., who was the publisher of the news site the Bayou Brief, showing Hyde-Smith's comment when she was reportedly campaigning with a cattle rancher. White told the Associated Press (AP) he obtained the recording from an individual he described as “a very reliable, trusted source.” The video was shot in Tupelo, in front of a statue of Elvis Presley.

"There's no excuse to say what she said," White, who has been writing about racism in the South for about a dozen years, said of Hyde-Smith.

Hours after facing backlash for her comment, Hyde-Smith defended herself saying her Nov. 2 remark was "exaggerated expression of regard."

“I referred to accepting an invitation to a speaking engagement,” Hyde-Smith said in a statement, obtained by the AP. “In referencing the one who invited me, I used an exaggerated expression of regard, and any attempt to turn this into a negative connotation is ridiculous.”

Hyde-Smith's comment was condemned by former congressman and former U.S. agriculture secretary Mike Espy whom she will face off in a Nov. 27 runoff. Hyde-Smith and Espy each received about 41 percent of the vote in a four-person race Tuesday.

“Cindy Hyde-Smith’s comments are reprehensible,” Espy campaign spokesman Danny Blanton said in a statement Sunday. “They have no place in our political discourse, in Mississippi, or our country. We need leaders, not dividers, and her words show that she lacks the understanding and judgment to represent the people of our state.”

The national NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) president Derrick Johnson, who was from Mississippi, also slammed Hyde-Smith’s comment.

“Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith’s shameful remarks prove once again how Trump has created a social and political climate that normalizes hateful and racist rhetoric,” Johnson said in a statement. “Hyde-Smith’s decision to joke about ‘hanging,’ in a state known for its violent and terroristic history toward African Americans is sick. To envision this brutal and degenerate type of frame during a time when Black people, Jewish People and immigrants are still being targeted for violence by White nationalists and racists is hateful and hurtful.”

A Republican activist who initially supported another candidate in the special U.S. Senate election said he will vote for Hyde-Smith in the runoff, even though he considers her a weak candidate.

“That comment about ‘a public hanging’ is much ado about nothing,” said Scott Brewster of Brandon, who is white. “She’s not very smart and made a tone deaf comment. It doesn’t make her a racist.”